patrickg68 wrote:Not you. BringthePain. He seems to think that just because I defend what I believe in, I must be wrong. The simple fact is that welch hasn't shown any evidence that the option offense doesn't work.

You got it exactly right.... because your "defending" instead of "debating".... that's why I told welch to save his breath.... People who "defend" aren't able to see outside the box... the definition of "defend" is to protect, to stand up for, to attempt to disprove or invalidate.... a Lawyer "defending" his client doesn't ever reason and say, "Well, maybe the defendant could have hidden the gun in his glove compartment".... during a trial, a lawyer defending his client, even if he thinks he might have done wrong, will never turn to the jury and say he could be guilty....

People who "debate" are able to see outside of their box... able to stand up for what they believe in, and also keep an open mind on why their opponent thinks otherwise.... instead of attacking them... they are able to reason .....something if you read over many of your own posts with an outsiders mind... you'll see that you don't do very often... that is why I told welch to save his breath... it was not about not letting you express your opinion or you being wrong..... Think outside your box, and maybe more people will attempt to see & agree on the way you think...

Now to get back on topic.... Though I am sure you are probably one of the more wiser one's here when it comes to college football.... When there is 32 Coaches in the NFL who specialize in "football"... and none of them, if ever rarely use the option... it seems to me that it would be because it doesn't work at the NFL level... if it did work..... they would use it plain and simple...

I tend to believe they know more about "football" than any of us and if they ain't using it... it means it doesn't work...wouldn't you agree?

**SPECIAL EDITION**

CurveBall - "It might be YOUR biggest game of the year but it really doesn't seem to be as big a deal for Dallas fans anymore."

Well, if thats the case, then welch is "defending" his argument too. And since when have you ever said to someone during a "debate" that they were right and you were wrong. Don't be a hypocrite. You are also showing that you don't have any evidence that an option offense won't work either because if you did, you would present it rather than attack me (having a lack of evidence is not evidence in your favor).

How do you know that coaches think the option won't work? Have you asked them? Have you seen any coaches state that the option won't work in the nfl? I don't see how anyone can say for certain that something won't work until it is tried. Thats just common sense. Think about it this way. Every single play, every single stategy ever devised in the history of football has not worked until it has been tried. 50 gut didn't work until it was tried. Neither did the counter trey or the one back offense.

How do you know that coaches think the option won't work? Have you asked them? Have you seen any coaches state that the option won't work in the nfl? I don't see how anyone can say for certain that something won't work until it is tried. Thats just common sense. Think about it this way. Every single play, every single stategy ever devised in the history of football has not worked until it has been tried. 50 gut didn't work until it was tried. Neither did the counter trey or the one back offense.

Darrel (or Daryl?) Royal began using the wishbone at Texas about 35 years ago. Oklahoma picked it up about the same time.

As BTP observes, NFL coaches have had a very, very, very long time to look at the wishbone, veer, option offense.

I am old enough to remember that reporters asked NFL coaches about the wishbone (and its cousins) back then, and people like George Allen just laughed. Coaches laughed. The answers were, approximately:

- some things that work with kids won't work with the big boys.

- is this a joke?

- do you want me to bring back the single-wing?

- we would love to plan a defense for a team that can't throw a pass.

- You mean we should use <Griese / Tarkenton / Stabler / Jurgenson> as a running back?

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To make the talent issue clear: both of the college offenses can win if you have recruited bigger, faster, stronger players. They collapse when you face a team with more or less equal talent.

On the run and shoot, see Spurrier's misadventures in 2002 and 2003. For backup, look at the results of Redskins / Lions and Redskins Falcons in 1991. The Skins played each team twice, counting the playoffs, and neither the Lions nor the Falcons scored more than about 10 points in any of the four games. The closest was the Skins/Falcons NFC semi-final, played in rain and mud that took away the Skins long passing game.

Are you seriously trying to say that the "Red Gun" was effective in the NFL?

Did you watch Jack Pardee's last hurrah, the classic Oilers - Bills playoff before SB 27?

And, incidentally, the Redskins defense showed how to beat the Bills hurry-up offense. Petibon had his players practice and practice their substitutions until they could get all of their normal defensive packages on the field during the time the offense gathered for the snap. The Bills no-huddle, hurry up, two minute offense was shown to be fundamentally crude. Simple.

On the wishbone family, we all watched Oklahoma/Miami, and that was enough proof.

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(The comments about Lombardi and Parcells make no sense. Are you confusing the half-back option pass with the option offense? What does throwing on first down have to do with the wishbone/veer/option?)

OK, you're right, BTP. Enough. If this has anything to do with when Bart Starr chose to pass, which was, like any other QB, on any down, then we are floating into the Clouds.

*

So: You can run the option offense in high school. You can run it in college. NFL coaches have looked at it, and they use an option play about as often as they use a reverse or the Statue of Liberty play. A trick play that might fool a defense once, but not twice, not for an entire game or an entire season.

You are blatantly wrong when you say that the run and shoot and option offenses require more talent to work than a pro style offense. There is a reason that Navy and Air Force run the triple option. It allows them to compete against teams with far more talent. I don't know where you have gotten this notion from but I'm guessing that you are making it up because you are clearly wrong.

Spurrier doesn't run the run and shoot. It is a completely different offense. Many run and shoot principles can be seen in most nfl offenses. The run and shoot is an offense that is based on having the receivers read the defensive coverage and adjust accordingly. It is done out of a 4 wr formation. Spurrier does have his receivers read the coverage at times, but he also runs a lot of I formation.
His staple play is the flat/curl pass. Spurriers offense is an example of an offense that only works with superior talent. His downfall was that he insists on using 5 man protections, yet he doesn't have any hot reads, audibles, or adjustments that the offense can make if the defense blitzes. Spurriers offense is a poorly designed one.

Oh, well now I agree. The run and shoot wasn't successful in four games so it must not work.

Do you mean the "K Gun" that was run by the Bills? If you do, I wouldn't use a team that went to 4 consecutive Super Bowls as an example. Besides that, they didn't run the run and shoot.

What exactly was the problem with an offense that put up a 30+ point lead in the first half? They had a very good offense being run by Warren Moon. In 90' and 91' he put up almost 4700 yards passing each year running a "college" offense against nfl teams. If the run and shoot only works against inferior talent, and the talent levels of the teams in the nfl are too similar to permit such an offense to work, then how did the Oilers go 11-5, 10-6, and 21-4 in 91', 92' and 93'?

I never said anything about a no huddle offense. Besides that, the no huddle isn't an offense. Any offense can be run without a huddle.

Did you happen to see the option offense not work to the tune of 62 points in the 96' Fiesta Bowl against Florida? As a matter of fact, the option offense is so bad, Navy won only 10 games this year.

You were saying that the systems run by Lombardi and Parcells were run only and were using to try and disprove my argument that owners don't like the option because it is perceived as boring. Thats not the case. Lombardi was throwing in situations in which very few coaches at the time would. They may have been run oriented, but they were still pro style systems. The option offense is perceived as boring by owners and that is the reason it is not run in the nfl.

The option is not a trick play. It is an offense, or at the very least a package of plays. Of course you think the option doesn't work. When it is run in the nfl, the execution is piss poor. If any of those teams actually used it as something other than a trick play, it might actually work.

Finally, you may be tired of me debating this topic with you, but I feel that I have to counter the false information that you are putting out. You very clearly don't have much knowledge on the strategic side of football. You don't know the run and shoot from a spread offense. You don't know the wishbone from the I formation option offense that Nebraska traditionally has run. You need to learn a lot more about football before you can reasonably expect to debate with me the merits of different football offenses.

- the variations on the run and shoot are so similar that I lump them together. Spurrier's difference is trivial.In it's pure form, and I mean precisely the form introduced by Mouse Davis into the NFL, it failed.

- What? Failed? The various run&shoots ran up yardage in the first couple of seasons in the NFL -- end of '80s and early '90s. Defensive coordinators studied how Petibon killed it, and followed his lead. That's the point about the Lions and Falcons games in 1991. Before the NFC chamionship, reporters asked Petibon "How can you stop Detroit? They made the Cowboys look silly". He said something like, "Well I don't know, but I guess we won't do what the Cowboys did." Petibon did not give the Lions time to adjust -- on the first play of the game, as a matter of fact, Charles Mann broke through the protection and cut Erik Kramer, the Lions QB, in half. Fumble, Redskins TD in the next play, and so on. Repeat: the Redskins defense went right after the run and shoot and strangled it. Once Petibon had showed how, other teams followed. The fad died away. How many teams run that offense today?

- The point about equal talent is that the wishbone family and the run and shoot family both collapse when facing big, tough, aggressive teams with equal talent and proper coaching.

- I mentioned the Bills no-huddle because you explained that such and such was designed to give a defense no time to change, just like the two-minute offense. The Bills ran a two minute offense, and Petibon still made his substitutions and called his plays. It was the Bills offense, not the Redskins defense, who were frozen. Again, a lesson from which other could learn. How many teams run the old Bills offense today?

- The comments about Lombardi and Parcells make no sense, or at least appear to have no relevance.

- Are you trying to say, and have you been trying to say all along, that the main reason no professional team runs the option offense is that the fans or the owners think it is boring? I have watched the games, and fans always want to win. They don't care as much about how. In the '60's, the Redskins had no defense, no running game, and the best passing in football. No fans were all that thrilled about going 6 - 8 every year. Think, now, about the '80s and early '90s, when the NFC crushed the AFC year after year. The AFC had the "class of '83" super-star QB's: Elway, Marino, Kelley, Esiason. Big deal. Fans liked seeing the Bears frighten the Patriots off the field in SB 21. Nobody complained that the Parcells Giants were boring. The "smash mouth" teams like the Giants and Redskins munched on the small, quick, agile teams like the Broncos. Nobody complained.

- How would a professional defense stop the option offense? Probably the same way we have seen it done in college: big, fast LB's and DB's would get into the middle of the QB tosser and his tossees. The play depends on making that outside guys hesitate -- take the QB or the halfback? An NFL defender would go for the hard and fast, depending on the other defenders to take their assignments, stay in their lanes almsot like defending against Randall Cunningham or Daunte Culpeper.

- Did you see the Redskins defense this year? Most of the time, even against Pittsburgh, they hit a couple of yards behind the line of scrimmage. A sideways-moving offense like the option would have real problems.

- Finally, as BTP and I pointed out, the wishbone family has been around for 35 years. NFL coaches see it in game films they study when they evaluate college players. They don't take it seriously. Not once in 35 years. Are they incompetent?

Spurriers offense is not the run and shoot. Lumping his offense in with the run and shoot is like lumping Bill Walsh's system in with the Gilman/Coryell system. His offense may share a few similarites with the run and shoot, but virtually every offense in the nfl does.

Where is this proof that the option "collapses" when facing equal talent? That is pure bull. If the option requires superior talent to be successful, then why do teams with talent shoratages like the service acadamies run the option? The option requires less talent to be successful than a pro style offense. If what you mean to say is that an option offense "collapses" when going against superior talent, then I agree with you. But no system will work well when facing a superior team.

Yes, I'm saying that owners think that fans want to watch teams throw the football. I still stand by my point that despite the fact that Parcells' offense was based around the run, it was still a PRO STYLE offense. Not throwing much to Parcells was still 15 to 20 times a game. If an option offense is being run well, there may be only between 5 to 10 passes a game. Owners are also afraid to try the option simply because it hasn't been tried before. It has no track record of success in the nfl.

I disagree with this notion you have that teams can stop an offense. They can't. There is a reason teams run offenses and not plays. The principle of an option offense is the same as a pro style offense. If the defense is taking one thing away, they are opening up something else. Find the weakness and exploit it. What the option does is put pressure on the defense to never be out of position or risk giving up the big play. Defenses have to worry about giving up the big play in the pass against a pro style offense, but not the run so much. That is not the case when a defense is facing an option offense.

There is a hole in your theory about how to stop an option offense. If the offense gets all of its blocks, for the most part, there will be a player unblocked, the FS. That puts a lot of pressure on him to come up and make the tackle on whoever has the ball. If he is going to be very aggressive against the run, then your cb's had better be pretty damn good because they will have the receivers one on one with no safety help at all. With todays pass interference rules, I would like my chances in that situation. Also, if the defenders are going to get inbetween the qb and the pitch man, they are just opening the way for the qb to keep the ball. Unless of course you are talking about the rest of the defense and not the pitch read. In that case the defense would have to totally abandon the back side of the play as well as pass defense. The offense would adjust by running some misdirection and some playaction passes in order to get the defense to loosen up a bit. Then they could go back to their base stuff.

There is a reason that Pittsburgh was getting hit in the backfield. The running game from the I formation is very slow developing. Unless you have superior blocking, the basic running game utilizing a deep back will not work.

How long did it take for the passing game to become a basic part of nfl offenses after it was first developed? Yes believe it or not, the pass was once thought not to work or to be a gimmick play. Look at what happened when it was given a chance.

How long did it take for the passing game to become a basic part of nfl offenses after it was first developed? Yes believe it or not, the pass was once thought not to work or to be a gimmick play. Look at what happened when it was given a chance.

I think that's a fabrication. What are you basing that on? In 1936 the league had it's first 1000 yard passer in Arnie Herber. Then, Sammy Baugh came along and posted a 1000+ yard season in his rookie campaign.

THE LEAGUE RECOGNIZED THE EXCITEMENT OF THIS NEW PASSING STYLE AND IMPLEMENTED A RULE CHANGE TO ALLOW TEAMS TO CONTINUE WITH THIS NEW-FANGLED PASSING STRATEGY.

In 1938, the league introduced the 15 yard roughing the passer penalty in order to protect the QB, and thus this new passing ideology, and the game was IMMEDIATELY changed forever.

Yes, but pro football started in 1892, and the nfl started in 1920 initially known as the American Professional Football Association. The T formation wasn't brought to the nfl until the 1930's. For a period of time the single wing was the dominant offense in the nfl, and that is not exactly a passing offense.

Actually the T formation came in 1940 when Halas used it to put the worst whipping on the Redskins in football history 73-0. I know they started only a few weeks before when an offensive back went in motion before the snap by mistake. i know it was only a few weeks because the Redskins actually beat the bears 7-3 three weeks before the final and the Bears DIDN'T use the T formation yet.

But so what?

Sammy Baugh THREW for 352 yards in the 1937 championship game, and you're contending that there was no passing attack until halas' T formation?

Sammy Baugh is what revolutionized the forward pass... and I don't neccessarily mean him personally, but I mean the emegence of the 'Passer' is what led to a passing attack. Guys like Baugh, herber and Sid Luckman were just the first non running back types to be put into a position TO throw the ball.

The leaguie liked the added excitement so much that they implemented the rule in '38 to protect these new young gunslinging athletes.

Sure halas T formation drastically changed things as well. It pulled defensive lineman back from 7 and 8 man lines, and started football down the road to the complex game of shifts and slides that exists today.

But the passing attack was in full force a few years before that with Slingin Sammy Baugh.

The laeague didn't take long to adapt thereafter... it just took athletes like the guys mentioned for teams to realize that you could implement a passing attack that WOULDN'T be gimmick-y if you had a guy throwing who could THROW A BALL.

Maybe the option wouldn't be gimmicky if the offense had a quarterback who could run the option and the offense actually practiced it.

Welch keeps talking about how you stop an option offense but the idea that a particular scheme or strategy can stop an offense is false. Any well devised offense will be able to adjust to what the defense is doing and exploit its weaknesses. Maybe for an option offense to work in the nfl, it would have to incorporate some other things, but I don't understand how you can say an offense absolutely won't work if it hasn't been tried.

The problem is that the linebackers line up so far off the ball that you would have to really pound the fullback and also be able to hit some quick playaction passes to the tightend to keep them from being too aggressive.